


If the Seas Catch Fire

by goddcoward (orphan_account)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Color vision, Courtship, Eyestealers, Fluff, M/M, Rating May Change, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21749131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/goddcoward
Summary: After a tense encounter with some eyestealers, Madara and Tobirama find out that they're soulmates, and they commence courtship after a truly embarrassing month of just looking at each other like they'll die if they don't.>The hands around his throat tighten unbearably, and his thought process is impaired to such a degree that he can hardly register the agony sparking across his synapses. Squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, he’s trying to shout – for help, to insult the bloodline thieves, for the sake of his pain, he doesn’t know anymore – but no noise escapes his mouth.>As soon as he throws out his awareness, he can tell that something is wrong. Not just with the extremely secret definitely not-a-crush he’s been harboring for that bastard Uchiha for the better part of fourteen years, now, but with the mission, with Madara in particular.>The presence of colors can only mean one thing, and as he forces his mind to process the realization, the universe shatters, the ground tilting beneath him, Tobirama’s face blurring as he falls, the darkness returning.Senju Tobirama is his soulmate.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara
Comments: 38
Kudos: 354





	1. ALIZARIN I

**Author's Note:**

> this was going to be for the gift exchange but then it got too long and i got an idea i like better so here it is for now!! i have been working really hard on it for like. several months. so any love would be very much appreciated! i think it's more well-written than the stuff i usually churn out

The Katon jutsu explodes before him with the white-hot intensity of a star gone supernova, a mighty conflagration igniting the air and burning greedily through everything it touches. Through the blistering blaze of fire and chakra, he senses several life signatures stutter, stutter, and then stop entirely, candles extinguished by his _Dragon’s Breath._ When the flames die away, charred, twisted corpses are left in their ruin, the vile smoke of carbonized flesh wafting off of their mangled forms.

Billowing clouds of ash and smoke obscure the battlefield, but for all the obvious power and prestige of his Sharingan, Madara has never needed _eyes_ to see.

Even as the detritus left behind by his inferno darkens his field of vision, his awareness rises like a flood all around him, his mind’s eye wide open and focused on his surroundings with unerring accuracy, glaring through the cloudy cataract of the deathstalker venom.

The ley lines running beneath the surface of the earth – chakric faults that behave not unlike tectonic plates – converge at this spot, the core of a cluster of ancient bodhi trees, all but indestructible at their ironwood cores. The remnants of his Katon jutsu simmer in the grooves of their scorched bark, peeling away like sunburnt skin. They have survived millennia of Hi no Kuni’s seasonal wildfires; there is little doubt that they will survive this. They’re already shedding the dead bark, little flakes of withered natural chakra ripped off the wood by the hot, stifling winds.

There is nothing visible to Madara’s mind’s eye that can’t be excused as the latent power of the bodhi trees, their chakra signatures shining bright in his awareness like enormous, stationary flares. He has no proof that there exist enemies here that weren’t conjured by his own paranoid imagination.

He allows his head to drop, allows himself to breathe through the agony of the wound that hellish scorpion summons had inflicted upon him, allows his Susanoo to flicker and dim before it fades altogether, bony constructs shattering like so much glass, vanishing into the night as quickly as springtime frost.

The relief is instant and almost overwhelming. Madara’s chakra coils are stingingly raw and almost entirely empty, and when his blood loss and increasingly impaired higher thinking processes are taken into account, that last, desperate _Katon: Dragon’s Breath_ was more than dangerous.

Nearly a full day of combat after forty-eight hours of travel and a week-long mission before that have worn him to the very bone, and when one last surveillance of his surroundings returns nothing unusual, he withdraws his chakra-sense, leaning into his exhaustion and allowing his legs to buckle beneath him.

He doesn’t have the chakra or supplies to send up a flare, doesn’t have the stamina to go any farther than he is, doesn’t have the lung capacity to simply call for help and pray that whoever hears him is a friend rather than yet another foe, doesn’t have the clarity of mind to devise any plan cleverer and more effective. The poison is spreading through his veins, slowly but surely, creeping along his blood vessels like a corrosive rust that consumes his chakra and his energy as it grows, pulsing in time with the beating of his heart.

He can’t ever recall being so tired in his _life._

Madara permits himself a spare moment to take one breath, and then another, and then a third, rhythmic breathing doing away with his hyperventilation as his racing thoughts slow and coagulate. He defeated all of the bloodline thieves, and there is no more danger here, not now. He can just wait for a moment, pause and rest and catch his breath while he takes the measure of his surroundings and gathers the shards of his composure.

He knows that the scorpion venom contains a paralytic agent. Every second he spends not sprinting back towards the village is a second wasted, every minute not used to broadcast his need for assistance a minute where he allows his body to deteriorate further, but—

He’s so _tired._ Surely, surely, his body is strong enough to fight off the effects of the toxin. Surely, he can just spare a _single_ short moment to prepare himself for what will no doubt be an agonizing journey, even if the distance remaining between his current position and Konohagakure would be laughable were he healthy, whole, well-rested.

His fingers shake on the handle of the gunbai when he tries to haul himself upright again, and although the open stab wound in his stomach protests plenty at the movement, that’s not his biggest concern. His legs feel oddly numb beneath him, muscles fluid and bones yielding where there should be surety and strength.

“Huh,” Madara says to himself, blinking as his hands stutter and shake and _multiply_ in his vision. “Well, _that_ can’t be good.”

It’s urgent, urgent, urgent, but he’s starting to forget what _it_ is, and when he looks up at the charred outer bark of the bodhi trees, the world spins and blurs, increasingly unfamiliar even as it tugs at his memory. There’s something important, something _vital,_ _something_ he has to do for the safety of his precious people and his village, but – what exactly _is_ it?

His mind’s eye is glazed and rheumy, its lids lead-heavy, and he can no longer resist the need to just let it slip shut altogether. He did a good job, he’s a good ninja, he doesn’t need to be constantly aware of _everything,_ does he?

His thoughts swim sluggishly in the thick pool of molasses that has suddenly become of his brain, and idly he wonders if this is what it feels like to be inside Hashirama’s head. How does the man _manage?_ No wonder he’s strange. If Madara’s thoughts were permanently impaired in this manner, he’d bash his skull against something hard until he was fixed or dead.

With his mind’s eye shut firmly closed, his sensor’s sight is gone. Of course, he still has his regular senses, still has his sight and his hearing and his sense of smell, but the smoke from his fireball is thick in the air and his Sharingan tug painfully at his optic nerves and he’s so, _so_ tired.

He only notices the bloodline thieves when hands close strangling-tight around his neck, cutting off his oxygen supply and making him gasp for air like a drowning man. Their presence is oily and unpleasant, and how had he _missed_ that, he’s a _ninja._

“Go ahead and take them,” a voice urges, and fingers – different fingers, gloved this time, not unlike his own – prod at his face. Madara makes a sloshed attempt to bite at them, but he misses completely and just ends up hissing like a snake as the kekkei genkai hunter gropes at his eyes. “Come _on,_ Kyōka. There could be reinforcements coming, and he’s still breathing.”

There’s a derisive snort, and somewhere beneath the encroaching darkness that settles over his mind in a heavy cloak of oblivion, Madara is offended. “The toxin has him all but dead, boss, and we’ve waited long enough that his higher brain functions should be impaired entirely if not gone at this point. It’s expensive as hell, but you were right; deathstalker venom does its work, and does it well. We have plenty of time to get them and leave, and all those _reinforcements_ will find is a corpse with empty eye sockets.”

“That’s _Uchiha Madara,_ you moron. As long as he’s alive, he’s a threat, and don’t you think that his absence would have been noticed by now? The man doesn’t make a habit of being tardy, and he’s got Senju Hashirama all but licking his sandals. The Hokage will send scouts out looking for him, and we better be gone by the time they reach him.”

“Fine, fine. Just a minute. I want to see how it looks in its native state. Stolen Sharingan are permanently activated, you know, and the Uchiha don’t let _anyone_ near their eyes regardless of whether or not the dōjutsu has manifested.”

Distantly, Madara sees a tall, dark blur come closer and closer until a third pair of hands force his chin up and brush his hair out of his face.

“I suppose you’re right, but this is _it,_ you hear me? I’m not risking our lives because you wanted to nerd out over a charged exploding tag. Every second we spend with him is dangerous. Konoha ninja could be coming at any moment, and he flash-fried all our sensor-nin; we wouldn’t know until too late.”

“Sage, boss, you’re gonna give me an ulcer with all that worrying. I think I’ve observed enough, so stop hovering, alright? Just hold his head still while I—”

The fingers poking at his eyes are suddenly possessed of a strength they didn’t have before, and they’re digging, digging, digging _into_ Madara’s orbital sockets, and he’s still being choked, helpless to even shriek in his agony as his Sharingan are abruptly _ripped out of his head._

“—secure the eyes, and _now_ we can leave.”

“Fine work, Kyōka. Give them here and let’s _go_ already.”

The hands around his throat tighten unbearably, and his thought process is impaired to such a degree that he can hardly register the agony sparking across his synapses. Squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, he’s trying to shout – for help, to insult the bloodline thieves, for the sake of his pain, he doesn’t know anymore – but no noise escapes his mouth.

The eyestealers – that’s what they are, _eyestealers,_ and how did they manage to bring Madara so low that they were able to obtain his Clan’s most coveted secret? – fade from his awareness, and he sinks into the welcome blackness with a sigh on his lips and a strange pull yanking at the base of his skull.

It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore. They got his _eyes._

Death, at this point, would be a mercy he doesn’t deserve.


	2. PTHALO I

It’s not Hashirama who brings it up to him. It’s not Izuna. It’s not even Hikaku.

“You,” Tobirama repeats slowly, trying to wrap his mind around the concept of _caring_ for Uchiha Madara, “are _worried_ about your shishou?”

Kagami, sitting seiza on the floor, little fists clenched in the fabric of his mission pants, nods, terse. “Yes, Tobira-sensei. It’s just – Mada-shishou _promised_ he’d help me work on my Grand Fireball today, since my birthday’s in a week and all and the best present _ever_ would be to be recognized as a true Uchiha, and he’s _not here.”_

No matter what sick glee Tobirama might derive from the idea of Madara failing to keep a promise, he loves Kagami, and, perhaps more importantly, _likes_ him too. A promise broken to Izuna would be something that’d make him shake his head and sigh about _stupid idiot Uchiha,_ but a promise broken to Kagami, small and green and so promising that sometimes Tobirama’s chest aches just looking at him?

That is nothing less than utterly _unacceptable._

“I have to train you and your teammates,” he tries, because he is nothing if not resistant to the idea of helping Madara. “I promised _them_ we’d work on combination jutsus today, and you know that Koharu will get on my ass about it if I don’t show up to assist.”

Kagami’s eyes go glazed and distant, like he’s picturing an irate Koharu following Tobirama around the tower, steam all but literally pouring out of her ears.

This is good – this is _progress._ A little bit more and maybe Tobirama will manage to convince the boy to ask Izuna instead—

Kagami shakes his head as if to center himself, and his sharp black eyes fixate on Tobirama’s face with unerring accuracy. Not quite on his eyes, but close enough to give the impression that he’s making eye contact, just like Tobirama taught him to do. With his Sharingan, the child isn’t susceptible to dōjutsu-based genjutsus, but the rest of his kids are, and he is nothing if not paranoid about the Uchiha, Kagami excepted.

“Sensei,” Kagami says, solemn and serious, and oh, _fuck,_ there’s steel in his gaze that wasn’t there before. He’s _determined_ now. “Sensei, you’re the only grown-up who is allowed to leave the village, available to do so, and strong enough in both combat and the iryō arts to help Mada-shishou should he need it. More than that, you’re a sensor, and you’ll be able to find him faster than anyone else. It _has_ to be you. Izuna-occhan can’t do it, Hashirama-sama can’t do it, Mito-hime can’t do it. You have summons and skill and also _time,_ and I’m not just coming to you begging, Tobira-sensei. I’ve put thought into this. You’re the only one who can help Mada-shishou.”

Tobirama will admit it; Kagami is _right._ His argument is clear and coherent and obviously well-prepared, and he’s come into this meeting with a stubborn attitude entrenched in his small being.

He can already feel himself breaking, but he can’t go down without a fight.

“Madara is a grown man, Kagami, and stronger than me, besides. He can take care of himself. It’s not inconceivable that he simply decided to extend his mission for whatever reason. Perhaps the village he was assigned to visit has good dango stands. Perhaps he’s well-suited to the hot weather of Tea Country. Perhaps he’s fallen madly in love with a foreign civilian and is busy convincing them to take pity on him enough to let him court them. There are any number of reasons that he could be late.”

Kagami is not deterred, and Sage, it’s annoying, but Tobirama is proud of him. He’s not giving up just because someone told him no, and he’s caught on to Tobirama’s growing weakness; there’s a self-satisfied gleam in his eye, hidden well behind all the concern, and – he really is worried, isn’t he.

 _Damn._ There goes Tobirama’s weekend. He’d been so hoping to spend it napping with his summons and teaching himself how to be an optician on top of everything else he has to do.

“Mada-shishou isn’t _ever_ late, though, Tobira-sensei. He isn’t Izuna-occhan. He’s professional enough not to care about dango and beaches and loves who aren’t his One, and the odds that he’d meet his soulmate and _not_ just kidnap them and bring them home with him in a timely manner are pretty low, don’tcha think?”

From what Tobirama knows of the Uchiha and the way they love, particularly Madara and his obsessive personality, he has to concede the point.

He sighs, deep and defeated, a long rush of air leaving his nose, and Kagami isn’t cheered, exactly, by the signal that he’s caving, but he straightens up in his seat, showing off that indomitable backbone he’s been using to whip Tobirama into doing his nefarious bidding.

“Sensei?” The brat _knows_ what he’s thinking, knows he’s going to agree, but Tobirama holds up a placating hand. He just needs a moment to accept his fate before he consents to rescuing Madara like the man is a damsel in distress.

A rather amusing image, all told, but then he makes the mistake of picturing Madara in a woman’s kimono, wide obi emphasizing the thick build of his muscular body, the sleeves no doubt taut around those _giant_ biceps—

“Okay, fuck, _fine,”_ Tobirama snaps, partly to revel in Kagami’s obvious relief and partly to get that horribly delicious Madara-image out of his head. “I’ll go, but you’re going to be the one telling Anija that I won’t be showing up for Friday dinner.”

Kagami, much more relaxed now that he’s gotten verbal confirmation of his success, smiles like a little cherub, and that expression means nothing good for anyone. “Aw, but Tobira-sensei, you _promised_ Team Tobirama that you’d help us work on combination jutsus today, and if you’re not there to keep Koharu from killing Homura, who else could do it but me?”

“Brat,” Tobirama says, but weary fondness seeps into his tone and Kagami grins up at him with no shame whatsoever. “Fine. You go gather the rest of them up, tell them that I’ve accepted an urgent mission, _no thanks to you,_ and then get them started on katas with as little violence as possible. I’m training you to be shinobi, not _barbarians.”_

Kagami chirps an affirmative and darts out of his office, throwing off nervous energy like a firework.

He’s really, genuinely concerned about his shishou, and – Tobirama has vowed many times before that he’d do anything for his beloved students.

If anything just so happens to include running off after Uchiha Madara for no reason better than the hunch of an eight-year-old, well.

He did say _anything._

Rather conveniently, he doesn’t have to bother himself to go looking for Anija – Hashirama comes to him, slipping into his office with an annoying excess of ninja-like grace and seating himself on the patch of floor that’s clear of treaties and documents and blueprints and scientific miscellany.

“Was that Kagami?” he asks, amused, and Tobirama masterfully resists the powerful urge to rip all the blood out of his body.

“Yes,” he says without looking up from the scroll he’s signing. This is an olive branch to be extended the Hatake Clan, and it just needs to be notarized before it’s ready to be sent off. “He had a mission for me, and I’m going to need you to get this notarized.”

Hashirama almost starts to pout at the mention of yet another chore he’s going to have to lower himself to do, but Tobirama can see the way his mind latches onto the word _mission,_ and he frowns quizzically. “I thought you were going to have dinner with me and Mito? And then spend your _one_ weekend off relaxing with your summons and raising hell in the labs?”

“That was the plan, and then Kagami ruined it cheerfully and without regret, as he does all things.”

Anija raises his eyebrows, but he’s more than familiar with the way Tobirama will talk about his brats – with irascible affection and no small amount of exasperation – and he doesn’t say anything more than, “So what _is_ this mission? Clearly, it’s important enough for you to drop your free time. What’s the deal?”

Tobirama purses his lips, considering. If he tells Hashirama, the odds are that he’ll support the mission, even if he doesn’t like the idea of his little brother leaving the village on such short notice. However, it’s also possible that he’ll insist on coming along, and having three out of five founders out of Konohagakure all at once is more than risky, even if Mito is one of the two holding down the fort.

…He could _lie,_ though. There’s nothing stopping him.

“Kagami lost something,” he says briskly, checking to see if the ink on the Hatake scroll has dried before rolling it up and sealing it shut with a bit of wax. “Something very personal and important that has more than likely made its way to a dangerous place, and as I am his teacher and an adept sensor, he took it upon himself to request that I be the one to locate it and return it to him.”

That the _something_ is actually a _someone_ and that the _someone_ is Hashirama’s Super Best Friend and Rival of Destiny™ is a detail he neglects to include for his brother’s peace of mind.

Hashirama clearly sees through his falsehood, but he must catch the reality of the urgency of the situation, fabricated or not, and he simply nods. “All right, then. I’m giving you permission to go. Make sure you bring your armor and your Hiraishin kunai and your backup sword and some chain mesh—”

“Anija, I’m a _grown man,_ I think I know how to pack for missions, and this will hardly be a long one.”

“—maybe go see Akimichi Chōmi and ask her if she’d be willing to lend you a few of her Clan’s chakra pills, and perhaps have Mito craft you some warding seals, just in case you run across any mischievous yōkai, and you know you can _always_ ask me for help, because that’s what brothers are for—”

_“Anija!”_

“—what? Oh, you’re grumpy! When did that happen?”

Tobirama takes a deep, calming breath, and then another one, and then another, and by the time he’s on his sixth he feels that he’s curbed his temper enough to be able to keep himself from trying to strangle his elder brother.

“Anija. I appreciate your concern, but I’m a competent shinobi, and I shouldn’t be gone for more than forty-eight hours—”

“That’s what _Madara_ said when he left, and now he’s been missing for a _week,_ and – hold on, what’s with that face?”

He quickly schools his expression into a perfect mask of icy indifference, but Hashirama, despite all appearances, is no fool, and he notices, tipping his head to the side with a frown.

“…You’re not going after _Madara,_ are you? Kagami didn’t ask you to look for his shishou, did he?”

Tobirama’s silence is more than loud enough to speak for the both of them, and for a long moment there is unbroken silence in the erudite mess of his office.

Hashirama is the one to break it. “Otouto,” he says, voice soft and grave, “I just – have to ask. _Why?_ You _hate_ Madara, and even though you’ve come around to Izuna and are Super Best Friends with him now—”

“Don’t call us that! It’s demeaning and unnecessarily homoerotic!”

“—even if you and Izuna are Super Best Friends now too, you’ve never warmed up to Madara at _all._ What’s up?”

Tobirama slips his eyes shut with a sigh. “Kagami asked me to, and he came with a well-prepared, logical, coherent argument—”

“Oh! You’re too much of a softie to say no to him! Good job, Kagami, exploiting that weakness like a real ninja!”

“—and since he had several good points, I agreed to take some time off to go look for your precious Uchiha.”

Anija hums, posture straightening. _“Well,_ I _guess_ I could stop you, but you are very well-suited to tracking missions, and I _am_ worried about where Madara’s gotten off to…I suppose I’ll let you leave as soon as possible, but make sure you bring your fur and your faceguard and—”

“Get _out,_ Anija.”


	3. PTHALO II

The night wind is cool against Tobirama’s face, and as soon as he exits the boundaries of the village, he makes for his satellite tree.

The satellite tree is a massive old oak, overflowing with natural chakra that Tobirama can tap into in order to extend his range and precision without overwhelming his chakra-sense. It’s tall and almost leafless with a good view of the surrounding forest, and it’s a perfect vantage point from which to begin his search for the world’s biggest, most ungrateful asshole, a surly man who surely won’t appreciate Tobirama’s help in getting him home, a very, very _attractive_ man who _might_ appreciate Tobirama’s help in getting him home and then drag him into bed as a thank-you—

As soon as he throws out his awareness, he can tell that something is wrong. Not just with the extremely secret definitely not-a-crush he’s been harboring for that bastard Uchiha for the better part of fourteen years, now, but with the mission, with Madara in particular.

Tobirama can sense him, all but completely drained of chakra, his energy oddly sedate, his body lying completely still in the grove of bodhi trees that’s roughly five kilometers northeast of the satellite tree.

He’s not moving. There are unknown chakra signatures clustered around him, and he’s not attempting a jutsu, not even fighting back all that hard, if the strange sluggish quality of his chakra isn’t something that Tobirama hallucinated. He’s clearly under the influence of _something,_ completely surrounded by untrustworthy strangers, and is probably letting them do whatever they want to him, given how he wouldn’t be able to resist—

_"Well,” Tobirama says, nudging the nearest ashen corpse with his sandal, “you certainly didn’t hold back.”_

_Madara, several meters to his left, cradles a shaking, traumatized Kagami against his broad chest. “I couldn’t,” he snarls, his voice deeper and tone more intent than it usually is. He’s **angry.**_

_Understandable. They’d been right in the middle of their first joint training session with Kagami – one of Madara’s conditions for allowing the boy onto Team Tobirama in the first place – when they’d been attacked by the enemy nin. Kagami hadn’t gotten hurt more than a couple scrapes and bruises, but if Tobirama and Madara hadn’t been there, if they were any less competent and quick to react, he could have been very gravely injured if not killed._

_Kagami whimpers softly, and Madara’s arms tighten around his small form so much that his grip must be painful, but the child doesn’t protest. Tobirama imagines that the embrace of his Clan Head and shishou is comforting in the wake of a battle._

_Madara’s still sneering at the bodies, though, ugly and self-satisfied, and it occurs to him that there may be a reason why beyond his nephew and pupil being attacked unexpectedly._

_“What’s wrong?” Tobirama says. “You’re being weird. Is there an issue?”_

_“Not anymore,” Madara snaps, pressing Kagami’s curly head further into the dip where his neck joins his shoulder._

_“So there was one in the first place?”_

_“Did you see any emblems on their clothing or armor? Any sigils at all signifying who they might be or who they might be working for?”_

_Come to think of it, he hadn’t._

_“No. Is this especially meaningful?”_

_“They were bloodline thieves,” Madara growls, sharp and menacing, the sound echoing in his chest like he’s a tiger. “ **Eyestealers**. They knew Kagami would be here, knew that he’s already awoken his Sharingan, and counted on him being relatively alone. How could they have gotten that information, Senju?”_

_Tobirama’s blood turns to ice. Kekkei genkai hunters are nothing he’s unfamiliar with – he’s nearly been made a victim of them several times, given his close relation to the only living user of the Mokuton – but the implication that they targeted little Kagami specifically, and Madara’s insinuation that it’s **his fault** somehow?_

_“You **bastard,** ” Tobirama hisses, narrowing his eyes and advancing on the Uchiha Clan Head. “You – how could you think that? How could you dare to imply that I would willingly endanger Kagami in any way, for the Sharingan or not?”_

_“How could I not?” Madara snaps back, Mangekyō flaring to life. “You’re a Senju, the white demon of the Senju. I wouldn’t put you above eyestealing, not with **your** heartlessness.”_

_From within his hold, Kagami hiccups. He’s crying._

_Tobirama’s anger dissolves instantly._

_“Hush, small one, there’s no need to cry,” he says, soft and soothing, creeping as close to Madara as he dares given what the man apparently thinks of him. “The danger is gone now. You’re safe.”_

_Kagami twists around to look at him over one dark-clothed shoulder. “You wouldn’t! Sensei – you **wouldn’t!** Mada-shishou, you can’t say things like that! Tobira-sensei is a good person, a good teacher, and he’s been nothing but supportive of me!”_

_Madara snorts, but Kagami’s tears take precedence over his hatred for Tobirama, and he runs a gloved hand through that fluffy, curly hair. “It’s in the past, Kagami-kun. The Senju bastard is not entirely wrong. You don’t have to cry – we’ll protect you.”_

_His use of the word **we** keeps Tobirama up at night for days on end._

_Eyestealer,_ Madara had said then, spitting out the word like it had been a slur, hateful dark eyes trained on Tobirama’s face. _Eyestealer._

Eyestealer.

It all falls together. Madara must be weakened and unreactive because he’s been drugged or poisoned, without all of his chakra because he wouldn’t have had the time to replenish his reserves if he burned through most of them during his mission, surrounded by strangers because he possesses the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, the strongest form of his Clan’s fiercely-guarded kekkei genkai, and he’s alone and vulnerable, and only Tobirama knows where he is.

And, well. That makes the decision easy.

He bursts into the charred remains of the bodhi grove just as the burning-bright shadows that had cornered Madara vanish into the darkness, but if they’re leaving, if they’re leaving, if they’re leaving and Madara is collapsed on the ground, dark liquid spilling out into the grass, motionless and limp, that can only mean that they got what they came for.

Madara himself is just going to have to wait.

Tobirama follows them for half a minute until he has their bearing. Three individuals, all relatively energetic and healthy, all with impressive chakra reserves and strange, oily signatures. They don’t talk as they dart through the trees, but there’s no uncertainty in Tobirama’s mind: they acquired Madara’s Sharingan, and for that they will _pay._

He may not like Madara, even if he feels oddly drawn into his orbit. He may hold no fondness for that temperamental man and his insults and his hair, but he has a duty to his village and his brother and his Super Best Friend – _Sage_ but isn’t that an embarrassing way to refer to Izuna – and he’s never shirked his responsibilities before.

He’s not exactly planning on starting now.

The eyestealers only realize that they’re being followed once Tobirama already has them set up in his trap, and although they’re clever – they had to have been in order to obtain something as rare and ferociously protected as a fully realized Uchiha eye – they’re not clever enough to escape before they’re caught.

There’s a brief shout of warning before the seals triangulate, and a flash of rancid brightness lights up the darkness for half a moment.

When it fades, when the screaming stops and the chakra signatures in his awareness still, he strikes.

The eyes are easy enough to locate and secure, but the bigger issue is the bloodline thieves – how did they find Madara, and manage to defeat him? How did they corner him? How were they able get his Sharingan at all?

The three of them are paralyzed by Tobirama’s Viper Stasis Seal, so asking them questions would be pointless, but he does take a moment to scour their bodies for symbols and signs. Like those other eyestealers months before, their clothing is completely blank, standard shinobi wear – entirely unremarkable – and he spends a few minutes trying to think through their motives before he senses Madara start seizing.

Tobirama curses under his breath, seals the eyes into a specialized, sterilized storage scroll he’d brought with him for just that purpose, and wastes no more time in just ripping every molecule of moisture out of the thieves’ bodies with a few hand seals and an unrefined surge of Suiton energy.

He can’t stay and check over his handiwork. There’s an idiot Uchiha whose life is in danger, and Kagami would be _upset_ if Tobirama just let his precious shishou die.

He makes it back to the ruined bodhi grove in under half a minute to discover that Madara has gone frighteningly still again. Tobirama can’t sense his chakra, can hardly tell he’s there at all, and…

…it occurs to him for the first time that Uchiha Madara is just a man, just a mortal, just as susceptible to death as anyone else is.

_Unacceptable._

He sets aside the eye-scroll, wipes the foreign bodily fluids off of his hands, and forces his fingers to flicker through a long string of signs that cause them to glow pale with the chakra of a diagnostic jutsu. He presses them to Madara’s chest, and miracle of miracles, he’s still breathing, his heart still beating, but just barely. He’s hardly alive at all, but he _is_ alive, so the good news is that Tobirama won’t have to bother with the Edo Tensei.

Gracious, those first few attempts had been so _messy._

(Failed experiments are nothing he’s unfamiliar with. He is a scientist, after all.

Watching Kawarama and Itama shrink away from him in horror, cower and scream and curl up, shaking…

Resurrected persons who died a traumatic death at a young age do not retain their memories. To his little brothers, Tobirama was not Anija, but a strange teenager with bone dust on his hands and blood-dark eyes and an entire host of dead bodies piled on the floor of his laboratories. It’s little wonder they were terrified.

The sounds of their shrieking echo around the inside of his skull to this day. Hashirama was furious with him for disrupting their brothers’ graves, would have expelled him from the Senju altogether were it not for the fact that he understood that Tobirama only did it out of unbearable grief, but the sight of them, _scared_ by his presence, did more to encourage him to declare the Edo Tensei a kinjutsu than Hashirama could hope to accomplish in a hundred lifetimes. He’s only human, and humans die; it was a lesson learned, gruesome, traumatic, but a lesson nonetheless, and that’s in the past, now.

It’s in the past.)

There’s some kind of corruption flooding through Madara’s veins – a toxin of some sort, if Tobirama had to guess – and it’s spreading across his body from his left shoulder, damaging his nervous tissue. He’s very fortunate; had Tobirama been any slower, his nerves would have already disintegrated past the point of no repair, and he’d be permanently paralyzed, or maybe just dead. Luckily enough, that’s not the case, but it will take a great deal of concentrated, flawlessly controlled iryō chakra to repair his nerves while simultaneously ensuring that the poison doesn’t slow or stop his heart or cause damage to his brain.

It's going to be a long night.


	4. ALIZARIN II

_The earliest memory Madara can lay claim to is a nightmare._

_Senju – vicious, bloodthirsty monsters who will rip into children like Madara, like Madara’s siblings, who are the reason why so many of their people are sad and sullen and aching inside – stand over newborn baby Izuna, and he’s there, trying to stop the infant from crying. If they make any noise, the Senju will find them, and if the Senju find them, they will die. Of course, Madara is barely four and Izuna is only a few months old, so his piercing caterwauls echo through the bedroom they share, and the demons waiting outside the door learn of their location._

_Izuna is ripped from his arms as he screams, trying to remember the hand seals required for the Grand Fireball, trying to summon his wild, uncontrolled chakra, trying anything, and it’s not enough. His baby brother’s sobs increase in pitch and volume until there’s a wet gurgling noise, after which they stop altogether, and Madara shrieks like a hawk and batters at Senju legs and torsos and faces as he’s lifted up by the back of his yukata._

_There’s the cold press of razor-sharp metal against his throat, and then a searing, stinging, breathless kind of pain, and then he wakes, body slick with sweat and heart beating double-time in terror._

_Two nights later, the unthinkable happens._

_His voice warps around the screaming, but no sound reaches his ears. In the distance, he can hear baby Izuna wailing, but the noise falls through his mind without registering as such._

_When Father brings out the body, small, slender limbs folded up and pressed carefully against his chest, dark-haired head drooping unnaturally, black craters weeping blood where there should have been eyes, Madara isn’t strong enough not to cry._

_First it was Jirō, the original heir, Father’s pride and joy, his eldest son, the firstborn. Madara was barely an infant when he died, a victim of the Senju’s child-killing patrols, and so he’s never known what his parents’ faces look like without the shadow of his loss weighing them down. Next, Madara’s younger twin, Shōto – a brother he **did** know – a brother whose absence has carved a big black hole in his chest where there should be a heart._

_Now Kō, seven, just hardly able to perform the Grand Fireball. They brought him home on a stretcher with his torso cut open from hip to collarbone, and Kaa-chan hadn’t been quick enough about shepherding Madara away to keep him from catching a glimpse of the empty eye sockets._

_Bloodline thieves, kekkei genkai hunters, **eyestealers.**_

_He’s never come afoul of them before – few ever have – but they’re out there, and they covet the Sharingan with a dangerous jealousy, a jealousy that leads them to prey on young Uchiha, just leaving the safety of the compound for their first long missions, a jealousy that has stolen Madara’s brother away from him, a jealousy that he might one day become victim to himself._

_Madara insists on sleeping with Izuna in his parents’ room after that, insists that they take shifts so that no one is ever not watching the baby, throws almighty tantrums and spits fire and cries until smoke comes out of his ears, and finally, finally, old man Tajima caves, allowing his remaining sons to share a living space with he and his wife._

He wakes to an all-consuming blackness that subsumes his mind like floodwater, mind filling with thick dark static and nerves alight with the familiar, unwelcome sensation of bright, blistering agony. Distantly the sound of someone humming drifts in through one ear and out the other, a pleasant, soothing melody brought to life by a beautiful, gravelly voice, and he fixates on the noise, trying to breathe through the sudden, excruciating pain in his eye sockets. The sound is low and sonorous, nothing like the high-pitched chattering and shrieking of his hawks, but something in Madara’s mind can’t help but associate the two. It’s soothing, grounding, and unconsciously he relaxes, the tension bleeding out of his sore, overworked muscles as his fists unclench.

The humming increases in volume as he thrashes in his pain. The hurt radiates from his lower stomach, abdomen burning and stinging fiercely, and there’s a strange, heavy pressure lurking behind his eyes.

There’s something significant about that, something he should be aware of, but lucidity eludes him like so much water dripping in between his fingers. Desperately he grasps for it, reaching, reaching, reaching, not wanting to fall prey to the feral, instinctive fear he can sense lurking at the base of his skull, but it slips away again and again and again, and the frustration builds until the hands smooth across his fever-hot forehead, calming, grounding.

The fingers are cold and slender, their touch a balm to Madara’s animal anxieties. The contact lasts for barely a moment, but it’s soothing enough to send him spiraling back into the void.

The voice doesn’t wake him until it’s time to change his dressings. For the most part they work in silence, cool clever fingers stripping the soiled strips of cloth from his body with minimal pain and replacing them with deft speed some of the Konoha medic-nin could learn a thing or two from, and Madara’s just fine with that.

He attempts to blink open his mind’s eye, to observe his surroundings when his regular sight is still recovering from the ordeal of the eyestealers, but it’s crusted shut, glued closed with some kind of sticky chakra that repels his energy like two northern poles.

“Ah, ah, you shouldn’t do that. I sealed away your chakra-sense so that you wouldn’t overwhelm your mind with stimulus. The toxin that had been ravaging your nervous system will have made you extremely sensitive to chakra, and I thought it best that you not endure any unnecessary pain.”

The explanation makes sense, but the true blindness still leaves Madara unsteady and awkward, and he’s just about to lash out at his caretaker when they speak again.

“…It’s been a few days since you were last awake and lucid, though. It’s possible that we could try removing the bandages keeping your eyes shut. The medical jutsu I used to implant them doesn’t take more than a day to heal over, and enough time has passed that it should be safe to do so.”

The hands probe tentatively at his face, and Madara recalls the _other_ hands with vivid clarity. Before he can think there’s the sensation of sinew and bone giving way beneath his fingers, an unfortunate _crunching_ sound, a hiss of pain that’s not his own.

“Stay _away_ from me,” he snarls, voice pitched unnaturally low, chakra flaring. The shinobi who had saved him is utterly silent but for the tight sound of their breathing, their fingers still caught in the iron clamp of his grip.

They don’t make a noise when he releases them with a curse, fumbling at the blindfold and growling when it tangles in his hair and sticks to his face, tacky with dried blood.

He opens his eyes for the first time since their violent removal to the sight of a world drastically changed since the last time he saw it.

The first thing that meets him is the Senju bastard, but he can't focus on the shock of that, because...

Tobirama’s eyes are _red_.

Red is a phenomenon he’s never known before. Tomatoes, lifeblood, and Madara’s own Sharingan; crimson, scarlet, dying-flame red.

It’s beautiful. He’s beautiful.

Madara has known the man’s face for years now, but something about the vivid vermillion of his irises makes him take a second look, a deeper look, a look that has him breathtaken by the sudden, glaring obviousness of Tobirama’s loveliness. His hair gleams like molten silver in the afternoon sunlight, shafts of lazy gold spilling over him to illuminate his skin with a gentle glow. His eyelashes sweep over his cheeks as he blinks, long and pale and terribly delicate, an odd aesthetic for a shinobi Madara has known as the most ruthless human being he’s ever met, but for some odd reason, it suits him. _Delicacy_ is never something he’s associated with Tobirama before, but with his vision renewed, it’s all he can see; the bones of his face are fine and elegant, the arch of his eyebrows set perfectly over those gorgeous slanted eyes, the high sweep of his sharp cheekbones accented by the way his happuri clings to his face. He’s all white and gray and silver but for the deep, bloody red of his eyes and his facial tattoos.

 _The most wonderful thing in the world,_ Madara recalls his mother telling him when he’d asked her as a child what soulmate vision was like. _It doesn’t change anything, doesn’t make things look different, but it adds this entire dimension that wasn’t there before. You’ll know it the moment you get it, my darling. There’s nothing like it._

The presence of colors can only mean one thing, and as he forces his mind to process the realization, the universe shatters, the ground tilting beneath him, Tobirama’s face blurring as he falls, the darkness returning.

Senju Tobirama is his _soulmate._

**Author's Note:**

> oop and that's it!! i hope you enjoyed and please don't forget to leave comments and kudos!


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